FC Dallas 1-2 Diego Valeri: Call It a Post-and-a-Half...

OUR LORD AND SAVIOR.

The nice thing about playoff games is that they are fully and entirely present. A future of any kind exists for only one of the teams and that reduces everything to a series of moments - e.g., Diego Valeri (literally) slamming home a free-kick (and after FC Dallas players/fans had their beating hearts ripped from their chests), or Jeff Attinella smartly positioning his head to deflect a sure goal off his crossbar. C’mon, you know Jeff went low and kept his head high on that…a master class in misdirection.

And yet, I find myself wanting to talk about nothing but those little steps up the several flights of secret stairs that brought the Portland Timbers to this ripe moment of possibility, and a 2-1 win over FC Dallas in Texas. The total number of staircases falls a little short of the Winchester Mansion, but the Timbers gave old lady Winchester a run for her money…and for saner, séance-free reasons.

Portland’s game-winning goal contained a couple of the elements - e.g., David Guzman, who served the perfect pass to Jeremy Ebobisse, and Ebobisse for having the strength to shrug off the defender hanging off his shoulders (Reto Zeigler, right?), and the speed to elude a sprawling, stranded Jesse Gonzalez, to feed the assist to Valeri, who, just to note it, looks spring-flower fresh at the moment. To credit one of the other final pieces to Portland’s best-possible puzzle, Liam Ridgewell has looked like a DP defender since coming back from a variety of ailments, both physical and mental. Tonight’s win displayed the benefits of having players fill in the spaces around the guys who drive the team - Valeri, Diego Chara, and Sebastian Blanco - and, more to the point, the whole damn thing held up in spite of Blanco hitting a couple strokes over par.

I want to pause here to thank Nate Silver for my late, heightened understanding of polls, statistics, and averages. By that I mean, one team having a 4 in 5 chance of winning a game means that the other team has a 1 in 5 chance by translation (association? alchemy? fuck it, I flunked two kinds of math twice). As he explained, that 1 in 5 translates to a 20% chance that something happens, and that’s at least a half dozen steps below rare. I put up a bunch of tweets earlier today outlining why I thought the Timbers had a better than even chance to win tonight (even if I lacked the won-tons to say that outright). God’s honest truth, I’d have put Portland’s chances at 3 in 5 to win, and for all the reasons I noted - e.g., rest, having sharper attacking players than Dallas, and, more than anything else, Dallas being shit in front of goal of late, and against bad teams. Traveling stood as Portland’s biggest handicap, but they goosed the odds on that by, again, resting their best players in the final game of the regular season. And, to answer the question begged in my post on that game, the gamble paid off.

Alphonso Davies 2-1 Portland Timbers: Anatomy of a Gamble with a Big(ass) MLS Playoff Preview

thank you andres flores.

The Portland Timbers tipped their hands when it announced the starting eleven: getting rest for key players like Diegos Valeri and Chara, Sebastian Blanco, uh, Zarek Valentin, Liam Ridgewell, Larrys Mabiala…you should be sensing a pattern by now…probably even Jeremy Ebobisse; at any rate, the Timbers decided three points today mattered less than giving those players and a few more the best chance at being their best possible selves for Wednesday’s first-round playoff game at FC Dallas. (Halloween, guys, really? You’re gonna make fans choose?)

No one will know whether the gamble paid off until the final whistle blows on Halloween, but the Timbers’ understudies couldn’t hold up their end: they lost 2-1 to Alphonso Davies, who got a genuinely nice sending off from teammates and Vancouver Whitecaps fans after turning in a game-winning nearly-90 minutes at BC Place. As Davies sat on the sideline contemplating his personal reality, the TV flashed his career MLS statistics. Eight goals and 12 assists over 65 games. At first blush, you think, huh, thought it’d be higher. Bayern’s Munich’s decision to sign him only adds up when one clocks that Davies produced all of those numbers less one assist in 2018. The way he turned a seam into a tear to score his first goal explains the rest.

Portland's decision to field an army of stand-ins means there’s not a lot to say about this game beyond, guess that’s why they’re not starters. I’ll dig into the numbers down below, but I’m also going to come back later tonight to update this post with a broad-brush look at what the Timbers, and the rest of the teams who made the 2018 MLS Playoffs, look like heading into the post-season. That’ll take some research, but I should send that out into the world by the end of the night. There were some shocks across the league today, seismic, “two in the booter,” and so on.

Back to the Timbers, do I approve of the overall decision to rest, oh, everyone who has reliably proved to be someone this season? Yes, even though it meant Portland (effectively) threw away the chance to catch FC Dallas for the honor of hosting their first round playoff tie. Making that come off would have required a lot of things to go Portland’s way - e.g., Dallas losing at Colorado Rapids (check!) and Portland winning on the road by more than two goals. That’s not some pie-in-the-sky scenario - the Timbers beat RSL by three goals in Utah a few weeks ago - but that also meant giving up something as wholly tangible and valuable as well-rested starters. Add in the fact that Dallas lost its last three games of the season, and that they’d hardly been ruthless before that - 3-4-3 in the last 10 games, and those three wins came against at home against Houston and Orlando, and away to Vancouver - and the entire plan takes a step past safe toward cagey.

Portland Timbers 3-0 Real Salt Lake: Expectations and Getting High on Personnel

Steve! Steve Clark! C'mon, buddy!

My guess is that all the great revelations about the Portland Timbers’ 3-0 home win over Real Salt Lake have already dropped. Given that, I’m going short, laser-focused and bullet-y.

First, and as noted on Friday, I expected the Timbers to win this game with the silent, ass-clenched anxiety of a parent who sets a low bar and expects his (of course, supremely gifted) child to clear it with ease (WHY DO YOU DISAPPOINT ME?!). With that in mind, I went into the game with a general view that, if Portland drew it, I’d worry, and I’d shit my pants a little (just a little) if they lost. Portland cleared the bar, they are playoff-bound, and they could finish as high as…third? Maybe? Unless FC Dallas lets the Colorado Rapids run up the score (HA!), Portland would have to beat the Vancouver Whitecaps by enough goals to erase Dallas two-goal advantage in goal differential. Dallas losing is Step 1 in that process - right along with Portland beating the Vancouver Whitecaps, of which, why not? Vancouver has been bad against good teams at home lately (guess we'll find out, right?) - and, even on the road, a draw feels like the likeliest poor outcome for Dallas, and a draw puts them beyond Portland's reach. Again, that’s against Colorado at home. If Dallas wants to roll into the playoffs with any kind of hope, a draw feels like the most indulgent bar imaginable.

Back to the Timbers, and this game…

Second, watching the first half of this was enough to make me question how this win impressed even the most anxious Timbers fan. RSL looked more interested in a Portland win during the first 20 minutes than Portland did. They didn’t menace for the rest of the 1st half either (Kyle Beckerman's header viscerally excepted) and, again, that was a mystery…until the second half started. Holy shit and thank God for Steve Clark’s positioning/shot-stopping. The list of things for which I thank God involving Clark end there.

Third, thank God Portland got something out of that opening spell. Larrys Mabiala’s 15th minute goal made the later rope-a-dope possible. Even if it wasn't pure rope-a-dope (or rope-a-dope at all), the Timbers needed the breathing room. As for what changed, my first guess is that Mike Petke’s halftime speech was searing and hideously personal. RSL put the Timbers under incredible pressure from the second half whistle to, by my loose estimation, the 65th minute. Anything could have happened over that period, and that should be sobering, and not just in general. RSL is a worse road team than almost all the East (Orlando City clearly excepted, a couple others are close) and only marginally better than all the teams in the Western Conference who stopped mattering a couple weeks ago. Some patterns matter like laws of nature, and that's one of them.

Fourth, the 2nd and 3rd goal explain why RSL is one Los Angeles Galaxy win away from an early off-season (golf, guys, stoned golf). It also makes a case for why Timbers fans shouldn’t get to giddy about the score-line. Portland will not get looks on goal in the playoffs like the one RSL coughed up to Diego Chara, at least not against teams that matter. Just…RSL, on the road, perspective.

FC Cincinnati 1-1 Nashville FC: Hell, Yes, And to Hell with False Narratives

A lie, I tell you. A damned, dirty lie. Either way.

It’s rare that you have to wait that long for at least one person to fuck up during a penalty kick shoot-out, but that was in keeping with the game: tighter than a duck’s ass and, don’t worry, I won’t use that for the image. FC Cincinnati slammed the first decisive kick over the line, and they left tonight with their first playoff win in team history (seriously?). (Also, here's the Match Center for all of the details you want and more!)

Nothing should be taken away from Nashville SC, because they played a hell of a game. They even came damn near to fluking to victory by way of a looping oddball of a goal by Anthony Bourgeois. That erased Corben Bone’s far more attractive (can I call it sexy?) extra-time goal, the one that let me think - no, dream - that this game would end within the time allotted by The Founders (aka, 90 minutes). When the game reached the penalty kick shoot-out and Nashville couldn’t stop scoring…I don’t know. I’d prepared various parts of my body for some kind of inevitable, even if I can’t remember what parts guarded against which event. As one ball followed another into the back of the net and the inevitable drifted into the unimaginable…look, I’m glass half-empty as a motherfucker. I wasn’t expecting the best.

Curiously - or not, honestly - the glass filled over that invisible halfway mark when Kenney Walker stepped to the spot after Nashville’s Justin Davis skied his missed penalty kick into history. I trust Walker to piss ice water, and he did. Moreover, Cincinnati had just survived Forrest Lasso stepping to the spot just one kick before and - won’t lie - that worried me. I can’t explain why, especially when I rate Lasso’s foot-work higher than your average defender’s. Maybe it’s simple as a life-long bias against central defenders in attacking roles that don’t involve their heads. Whatever, I held my breath all the way through his wind-up, hands and arms wrapped around my head to keep…I dunno, something in. The doubts from spreading, maybe?

Seeing a man of technique like Walker stride forward, and a team leader to boot? I’d prepped for him missing but mostly out of respect for The Fates. Of course Kenney Walker buried it, and FC Cincy won the shoot-out, its first playoff win in team history, and the chance to keep dreaming of arriving in Major League Soccer with a trophy in the trunk.

Nashville SC 3-3 FC Cincinnati: Double-Fisted Heartbreak

No actual intention to go political. The rest were about prayer?

The original title for this post was, “The Maddest I’ve Ever Seen Matt Pickens,” so called because FC Cincinnati scored one of those glass-jaw specials that soccer punditry warns you of in every single broadcast immediately after Nashville SC drew the score level at 2-2. Corben Bone got free on Nashville’s right, cut back inside and fired to Pickens’ far side. Shot fired, shit lost, etc. 3-2 to FC Cincy, and in their last road game of 2018.

Cincinnati would feel a similar let-down (and a chink in the armor?) when Bolu Akinboye returned the favor via express service just as regular time drew its last (robust) breath (good game), and this game ended 3-3, and with a world of possibility, good and wish-that-hadn’t-happened for both teams on the field. (See The Match Center for all data.)

On the universal plus-side, both teams will get the chance to do it all over again, only this time in Nippert Stadium/Ohio. With all the points counted and the playoffs set to begin, 1st seed FC Cincy will face 8th seed Nashville in the first round of the USL Eastern Conference Playoffs, the day after tomorrow, effectively, 3 p.m., after school, at the flag-pole and in front of the entire motherfucking school. Place your bets now, and juice-box and orange wedges are your currency, people.

Where to begin? Even getting back to tonight is complicated, and for both teams. On FC Cincy’s side, I was about to say, when was the last time Cincinnati allowed three goals, only to realize that it happened just one month before, and against Toronto FC II. The point is, prior to that, it hadn’t happened since June and…against TFC II. (So, I guess the formula is not playing TFC II?) Another fun fact: that June 3-3 draw against TFC II came only five games into FC Cincinnati’s now-history-making-USL-unbeaten streak and, that lands my point: you’re not used to seeing FC Cincinnati give up three goals in one game because they don’t do it a lot. But they just did it against Nashville, the same team they’ll play in the first round of the playoffs. Sure, that happened in Nashville, but I’m at DEFCON 2, minimum. I mean, dumber things than a first-round flame-out for the regular season champs have happened in the history of sports…

MLS 2018 Week 32 Form Guide ULTRA: Yes, It All Makes Sense

Hallelujah, someone wrote a story from one of my throw-away phrases.

Hail to the God of Viking Viktories! I’ve landed one of these white whales before I turned into an accidental pumpkin! To keep on schedule, we are moving at a fast clip, people. In re structure: I stuck with talking about each game from the relevant week - Week 32, in this case - before turning it over to the Infoboxes (e.g, simple but useful tables) and notes on where every team in Major League Soccer stands after the relevant week - Week 32, in this case, but I repeat myself.

And, before getting to the results, the very simple key goes like this: “IN” teams are the ones either in or reasonably projected to the playoffs, “OUT” is the opposite (bad teams and/or people), while “Marginal” are the teams that float in and out.

As for MLS Week 32, in particular, take away the Vancouver Whitecaps smuggling three points out from Toronto FC’s broken bank, and you’ve got an extraordinarily predictable week. The statements ran from big (Montreal over Columbus), predictable (Dallas over Orlando) to inconsequential (LAFC over Colorado) from there. I’ll expand on all of that immediately below, before closing with my neurosis-laden stab at what it all means. Allons-y.

Montreal Impact 3-0 Columbus Crew SC

I actually sat through 60-ish minutes of this game, but only realized after watching the highlights that it effectively died when Alejandro Silva scored L’Impact’s second goal (the usual suspect delivered as well). Montreal needed it: with DC United beating the Chicago Fire, there does seem to be truth in the argument that Montreal has to win out to survive their bum-rush. Long odds on that, but mission accomplished this week anyway. As for Columbus, they need someone to get started; Justin Meram talked up how ready he was in one of those fawning profiles, but he was subbed off at 70…and with Mike Grella and Patrick Mullins to replace him.

Atlanta United FC 2-1 New England Revolution

On Atlanta’s second goal, you have to look at all the ways that defense could be pulled apart, and despair. New England’s only goal came too late to matter (but it is a subtle thing), which, if you translate that to “the wrong time” gives a rough explanation of the Revs’ season so far. A meaningless game, all things considered, and I expect some carnage from the New England locker room between this season and next, but at least they stopped Josef Martinez from scoring. The big event from this game was Miguel Almiron limpingoff injured. That has more big-shit potential than most injuries.

Pittsburgh Riverhounds 0-0 FC Cincinnati: Poop Just Got Real (and Thank God)

I've been conditioned to this FC Cincy a certain way...

I won’t call it a whole lot of nothing (or even a whole lotta nuthin’). I’ve gotten more pleasure out of scores of games, maybe even several hundreds of them (I’ve been around a bit), but Cincinnati FC’s goal-less draw at the Pittsburgh Riverhounds’ (dinky*) stadium wasn’t paint-drying/grass-growing/old-people-fucking level of torture. At the same time, check The Match Center for highlights, and good luck with it!

(* I’ve had the pleasure of watching U.S. domestic soccer live for over two decades, and I can’t remember the last time I sat in a stadium as small as Highmark Stadium. In its defense, it is only the flip-side of the farce of playing professional soccer at, say, Gillette Stadium.)

In an attempt to explain/analogize to this game through a series of moments, I offer the following:

Pittsburgh’s Neco Brett received a nearly perfect cut-back from a player whose name I don’t recall; he wound up losing track of the ball, allowing his right foot to push it past his (so they tell me) preferred left foot. Minutes later, maybe even as few as one, FC Cincy’s Emery Welshman knocked a loose back pass around Pittsburgh ‘keeper Dan Lynd, only to stumble onto his can at the end of trying to run it down. For the record, neither of these moments show up in The Match Center highlights.

The other moment happened in the second half - somewhere in the 70s, if I had to guess (which I do) - when Cincinnati’s rather large Forrest Lasso tried to shepherd a ball over the goal line with Kay Banjo hanging on his back; Banjo whipped his leg around Lasso’s largeness, nearly creating another chance. This also didn't make the highlights, and that's why I chose them.

Not every shot was terrible - Christiano Francois and Romeo Parkes tormented FC Cincy’s defense in a way I’ve never seen (even at 18 games watched, I consider myself a noob), and both Emanuel Ledesma and Fatai Alashe put solid shots on goal (and all those made the highlights) - but that this game didn’t see many good chances. The detail I flagged with Banjo is meant to draw out the idea that Pittsburgh played the better game, thereby surprising FC Cincinnati, thereby perhaps reminding them that things only get harder for the rest of the season and (are you paying attention??) into some indefinite future given the path this young team has chosen.

By way of translating reality to numbers, the best stat I can provide for Pittsburgh’s visible edge in this game would be shots, general: the Riverhounds had 18 to Cincinnati’s four. Credit Pittsburgh for being the team most likely to; credit Cincinnati for making them the team that never did - even if with moments of doubt (e.g., Lasso having to pull Brett’s jersey at 34(ish) or Hoyte flirting with an own-goal when Francois broke through (yet again) down Pittsburgh’s left in the second half). I can’t think of any way in which Pittsburgh wasn’t the better team yesterday, and that runs counter to normal for someone who, like me, still has yet to see FC Cincinnati lose.

Real Salt Lake 1-4 Portland Timbers: Chekhov's Axe

I worry sometimes, perhaps more than I should.

The Portland Timbers rolled into Sandy, Utah last night “needing a result” against Real Salt Lake, if in some non-specific sense. To give a tautly symbolic answer for what they wound up getting, I give you Lucas Melano’s first goal of 2018, and Portland’s fourth of the game. After playing something like even for 70 minutes, RSL either fell apart or the Timbers tore them apart - and in Sandy, too, a rare feat in 2018 - on the way to a 4-1 win that arrived late, but with gusto.

It was a strange game, honestly. Portland could barely connect more than three passes in the opening 10-15 minutes - and not by anything RSL was doing, but by just giving away the ball. It took them some time to knock that shit off and, even when they managed it long enough to create Jeremy Ebobisse’s game-opening goal, the quality and composure of their work came in and out like a series of cameos. If you watched the first 70 minutes of this game with your heart beating green and gold, you never stopped checking over your shoulder for the inevitable falling axe (you know that thing, where they show you a gun at the beginning of a play?). I can speak only for myself, but I didn’t stop checking my 5 and 7 for that axe, even after Sebastian Blanco put Portland up 2-1 with some strapping thievery. That lingering paranoia would last took three, maybe four minutes more when Blanco buried the game with his second goal of the game, and the Timbers’ third.

I became a contented puddle after that unswaddled miracle. Once it became clear that the Timbers could fuck up without fucking up the game? Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, etc. After a long day of watching my country self-immolate, this was very, very welcome. It was nice to have an uncomplicated, happy emotion for a few.

Portland built its win on all those goals (if with a dash of slam-dunk (e.g., Melano’s goal)), but, around half time, I noticed something that I wasn’t seeing: looks at goal for RSL, never mind any good ones. RSL scored, obviously, and through a slightly enormous seam left open when the Timbers’ got wrapped up in defending a cross that never came, but they didn’t get too many shots in the end (nine total; numbers mean something when they match what you see). As I review the game in my mind, it feels like Portland’s midfield - ft. Mssrs. Chara and Guzman - managed the game as much as anyone else out there; I don’t recall heroics from this or that defender and Steve Clark didn’t have much to do in goal either. Portland kept RSL away from goal, basically, and for most of the game. The reality is, the Timbers managed the Hell out of this game. As much as that’s obvious in retrospect, I really never did stop checking for that axe. How many dumb/sloppy/clumsy goals have the Timbers allowed this season? No idea, and it doesn’t matter; what matters is the extent to which I’ve internalized that as “a thing,” something that just happens because bad things happen to good people. Or just Julio Cascante. When he came on, I could have sworn I saw a red dot on his back...

MLS Week 32 Preview: Stakes, and How Much They Matter

Fun image. Older image (look who's missing).

As I look over the match-ups for Major League Soccer’s Week 32, I’m seeing a good number of games that matter, but fewer games that I have any reason to expect to be good. To put a sharper edge on that, few of these results will be important, at least beyond the hopes and dreams of the local fan base. Here’s a compare/contrast that makes the point: Real Salt Lake v. Portland Timbers involves two teams with something to play for, and, even if neither team plays all that well, the stakes will make every kick, no matter how unfortunate, matter a little more, and all those things make this a good game simply because it exists; by way of contrast – and I’ve got several options, so let’s go with… - FC Dallas v. Orlando requires the result itself to be of any interest to anyone outside the Dallas metro area and (or, given where they play) its exurbs. For anyone wondering, yes, I omitted Orlando from the locus of locations that give a rat’s ass about this result.

All in all, I put the total number of games that match RSL v. Portland (i.e., “good because it’s important”) at three of Week 32’s 11 games; Toronto FC v. Vancouver Whitecaps makes a quiet case for bumping that up to four games, but another, more persuasive case exists for treating both teams’ hopes for the playoffs like Canada’s chances for reaching the World Cup. Appropriately.

In the rest of this post I’ll briefly preview all of Week 32’s games –RSL v. Portland gets a little extra and goes first, because, fan! I’ll direct most of the notes to expectations, as opposed to questions of tactics, “hot” players (play, not looks, except where noted), or other granular things that I don’t really know about. I pull these assumptions out of two places: 1) the rolling monument to my neuroses that I call The Form Guide ULTRA (Week 31's), and 2) my ass. Moving on…

If you’re a Portland Timbers fan, you should be worried about their chances away to RSL on Saturday – and mostly because RSL holds most of the cards, if not all of them. That’s not a call for panic – four points separate the Timbers from the abyss, after all, and the chasing Los Angeles Galaxy has its own Death Race 2000 to run (see below) – but the track records for both teams, both season-long and current, lean in RSL’s favor. “Tilt” is the correct verb, because this isn’t toddler versus dumptruck: in terms of patterns, this pits 3-5-2 in their last 10 games for Portland, against 4-2-4 for RSL; and impressive as RSL’s nearly 2.0 goals per game over that same period looks, their 19 goals for over that period get massive padding from their back-to-back six-goal games against the Colorado Rapids away and the Galaxy at home. That doesn’t make those results any less impressive (or timely), but wisdom points to treating outliers as such when you play with numbers.

MLS Week 31 Form Guide ULTRA: New Week, Good One, Too, New Format; Same Tables

This guy's fault. (Also, real good live performer.)

Because I’m on short time this week (saw The Jesus Lizard on Saturday, interested parties better get to ‘em before David Yow keels over on stage), it’s going to take more of this week than I want to organize a Top 5 talking points to kick off this ride through Data Hell (see the “InfoBoxes” below). Then again, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. I’m not really equipped to give detailed analysis – look below, you’ll see it’s mostly numbers I’m relying on – so, I’m going to try linking to the scores/match recap pages and flagging points of interest in the highlights and other data sets for each game. [Ed. – I’m only giving one link to each game; if you want to see what I’m talking about, you’ll have to do some poking around.] If nothing else, that matches with my actual knowledge of what’s going around MLS.

So, yeah, that’s your basic structure – notes on games, then InfoBoxes. To explain the latter, those are simple tables, one for each team in MLS, that talks about where each of them are after the week in question (e.g., Week 31). Those tables show how all the teams in MLS did over their last 10 games, against who (whom?), and in whose house. And, to provide a key for some terminology, “IN” teams are the ones projected for (or, now, already in the playoffs), “OUT” teams are the ones who, according to appearances and the numbers, look dead; finally, there are the teams who could still go either way, and I call them “Marginal.” I’ll have to work out where to put information between the notes on the games and the notes with the InfoBoxes, but I’ll try to keep repetition at a minimum.

All in all, I’m less surprised by what I see every week, and that makes me think there’s some value in all this. Call it a good guide to MLS, but hardly an infallible one. Anyhoo, let’s start with all the games in MLS Week 31. Links to the recap are in the scores. You see 'em, right?

New York City FC 2-0 Chicago Fire

The box score hints that this was the massacre it looked like. David Villa scored a beauty for NYC’s second, and on top of setting up NYC’s first goal with a half-blind backheel (he knew someone was back there). Going the other way, Villa’s goal was like a live re-enactment of why the Fire’s season sucks so bad.

Houston Dynamo 3-0 Philadelphia Union (U.S. Open Cup)

I won’t usually bring U.S. Open Cup results into these weekly reviews, but, holy shit, did Houston need a bright spot this season. Also, how can anyone be against DaMarcus Beasley winning a trophy for the long road ahead? This had highlights and lowlights - Mauro Manotas’ slicing sprint through Philly’s flank and Aaron Trusty fucking burying an own goal, respectively.